Sundance Institute has announced the four independent films that will make their digital debut on June 18 through a variety of platforms and storefronts, via the Institute’s Artist Services program. In addition, three previously announced titles will expand to additional portals. For details visit sundance.org/nowplaying.

Sundance Institute has announced the four independent films that will make their digital debut on June 18 through a variety of platforms and storefronts, via the Institute’s Artist Services program. In addition, three previously announced titles will expand to additional portals. For details visit sundance.org/nowplaying.

The upcoming releases, three of which are documentaries, focus on unlikely heroes such as the bold and brave reporters challenging the boundaries of free speech in their homeland of China (High Tech, Low Life) and women serving time in a Siberian prison who organize a beauty pageant every year to demonstrate that beauty can still be found in the ugliest of places (Miss Gulag). Titles will be available on a variety of platforms, including iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Microsoft Xbox, Sony Entertainment Network, SundanceNOW, VUDU and YouTube.

BURN will be released as part of a recent collaboration between Artist Services and non-profit partner organization Film Independent. The collaboration allows partner organizations to select films they have supported to receive access to best-in-class digital distribution arrangements secured by Artist Services.

My Best Day premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in the NEXT section.

TITLES AVAILABLE JUNE 18

BURN (Directors: Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez) — BURN is an award-winning, action-packed documentary capturing a year in the lives of Detroit firefighters who are charged with the thankless task of saving a city that many have written off as dead. A portion of proceeds from each sale go to the Leary Firefighters Foundation. (Released through Artist Services collaboration with Film Independent)

High Tech, Low Life (Director: Stephen Maing) — High Tech, Low Life follows two of China’s first and most daring citizen reporters as they fight censorship, document the underside of the country’s rapid economic development, and challenge the boundaries of free speech. (2010 Documentary Edit and Story Lab)

Miss Gulag (Director: Maria Yatskova-Ibrahimova) — Through the prism of a beauty pageant staged by female inmates of a Siberian prison camp emerges a complex narrative of the lives of the first generation of women to come of age in Post-Soviet Russia. (2006 Documentary Film Grant)

My Best Day (Director: Erin Greenwell) — Karen has to work her receptionist gig on the Fourth of July. A call comes from her long-lost father. Enlisting her friend Meagan, Karen investigates her father's trailer home. Karen's journey sets in motion a chain of events that will change not just her but this one small town forever. (2012 Sundance Film Festival)

PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED TITLES AVAILABLE ON ADDITIONAL PLATFORMS

Code of the West (Director: Rebecca Richman Cohen) — Code Of The West follows the human stories behind the recent federal crackdown on medical marijuana growers. This is the story of what happens when politics fail, emotions run high and communities pay the price. (Released through Artist Services collaboration with IFP and Cinereach)

Ecological Design: Inventing the Future (Director: Brian Danitz) — This documentary's thesis focuses on the emergence of ecological design, from the original vision of the independent thinkers in the 1920s to the powerful present-day movement. (1995 Sundance Film Festival)

Unfinished Spaces (Directors: Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray) — Cuba's ambitious National Art Schools project, designed by three young artists in the wake of Castro's Revolution, is neglected, nearly forgotten, then ultimately rediscovered as a visionary architectural masterpiece. (FILM FORWARD: Advancing Cultural Dialogue)

The Artist Services program provides artists with exclusive opportunities for creative self-distribution, marketing and financing solutions for their work. The exclusive aggregation partner for distribution across all portals participating in the Artist Services program is Cinedigm. The Artist Services initiative is made possible by The Bertha Foundation. These deals were brokered via pro bono legal services generously provided by law firm O’Melveny & Myers, which has built the legal framework for the Artist Services program and participating filmmakers since its inception.

Sundance Institute

Founded by Robert Redford in 1981, Sundance Institute is a global, nonprofit cultural organization dedicated to nurturing artistic expression in film and theater, and to supporting intercultural dialogue between artists and audiences. The Institute promotes independent storytelling to unite, inform and inspire, regardless of geo-political, social, religious or cultural differences. Internationally recognized for its annual Sundance Film Festival and its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, film composers, playwrights and theatre artists, Sundance Institute has nurtured such projects as Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.